Don’t make fire plan too complicated, North Frontenac Council tells chief, consultant

Craig Bakay | Oct 18, 2017

After Fire Chief Eric Korhonen and consultant Terry Gervais completed a power point presentation of how they intended to go about drafting the 2017 Master Fire Plan, North Frontenac Council was pretty specific about what it didn’t want - an expensive and complicated document.
The presentation came at North Frontenac Council’s regular meeting last Friday morning in Harlowe.

“I guess I have one concern that this is ballooning into a huge project,” said Coun. John Inglis. “We had looked at some fairly simple document.
“What will this cost? Are we getting into too much detail?”
“I don’t see the cost becoming too exorbitant,” said Korhonen.
“There’s a huge potential pitfall there,” said Coun. Gerry Martin. “We tried this before.
“We had too much input and ended up getting nothing.”
“You’re absolutely right, it can go in too many ways,” said Gervais. “But I’ll be developing questions very tailored to your needs.”

Mayor Ron Higgins asked for quarterly reports on the project.

“We will give your reports when we hit critical points,” said Gervais. “We don’t want to come in here on June 1 and drop a huge document on you.”
Council expressed its concerns about Bill 148 – Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act, 2017 and the implications it could have for rural municipalities’ fire departments, especially in the areas of vacation pay, scheduled time and the 3-hour minimum rule.
“This is big-city thinking and would totally destroy rural fire departments,” said Coun. John Inglis.

Council drafted a resolution to this effect to be shared with neighbouring municipalities and AMO.Mayor Ron Higgins said he expects to have a report on an “Ubuntu Contributionism Implementation Plan” for one of the two Council meetings in November.
Coun. Gerry Martin told Council the committee looking after Remembrance Day ceremonies is looking for family military memorabilia for a display.
“The memorabilia will be returned,” he said. “Anyone with memorabilia to share is asked to contact Brenda Martin at 613-479-2837.”

He said the members of the Tweed Legion will be coming to the cenotaph in Plevna this year, following the closure of the Northbrook Legion branch.